Category Archives: Economics

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This is the kind of thing that ‘progressives’ just don’t understand

Many people have made fun of Helen Gym Flaherty’s huge promises, including this poor site, with even the Editorial Board of the very liberal Philadelphia Inquirer calling her out:

Gym should be honest about her big spending agenda before voters go to the polls on May 16. Philadelphia does not have unlimited funds. Under Mayor Jim Kenney, the city’s budget increased 50% to $6 billion with little to show for the spending spree.

The city tried to tax and spend its way to prosperity in the 1970s and ‘80s and nearly went bankrupt. Despite 25 years of fiscal sanity before Kenney was elected, Philadelphia remains one of the most heavily taxed cities in the country. The city’s tax burden continues to contribute to its slow job growth, which, in turn, is linked to its high poverty rate.

Sometimes it’s the little stories which illustrate the problem:

Philadelphia pool closures leave neighborhoods without a vital community resource: ‘Why our pool?’

Across the area pools have been closing down due to lifeguard shortages and ongoing renovations. No one is certain when, or if, some pools will open again.

by Allison Beck | Monday, May 15, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

On a March afternoon, Lakia Toney recalled the sounds of kids laughing and splashing in the clear blue water during a summer afternoon. Neighbors of all ages joined in on the fun at 12th and Cambria Recreation Center.

She smiled at the memory of her North Philadelphia community enjoying the safety of the city-run pool, and one another’s company.

“(T)he safety of the city-run pool”? Perhaps the author, Allison Beck, forgot about, or never heard of, the city having to close the pool at the McVeigh Recreation Center last year due to “unruly behavior,”, violence, and vandalism.

Patrons of 17 Philadelphia pools are dealing with a similar story. Between lifeguard shortages and renovations, no one is certain when, or if, the pools will open again. The area pools that open often do so later in the season, with their gates closing after as little as six weeks.

Just 50 of 72 city pools could open in 2023, and many of them for only a portion of the summer.

Parks and Recreation has been recruiting lifeguards through high schools, community groups, and employment organizations. They are hiring Philadelphians who do not yet know how to swim and offering free training and certification ahead of the summer. Pay was recently raised to $16 per hour, with a $1,000 end-of-season bonus if guards submitted their applications by April 15.

Just how desperate do they have to be to find lifeguards if the city has to first train people who don’t even know how to swim?

Toney said the background checks and drug testing needed for lifeguards are a big barrier for some neighborhood youths. All candidates are required to submit to background checks and must pass a drug screening if they are over 18, according to Andrew Alter, a spokesperson for Parks and Recreation.

“When there are opportunities like this where they could be making a great income or helping out the community, helping out themselves, they’re not able to,” Toney said. “They can’t be a part of that because they’re involved in things that they’re not supposed to be doing and it’s hindering them from actually helping themselves and others.”

Heaven forfend! You mean that city employees who would be responsible for rescuing swimmers in distress, and be able to perform CPR, would be expected to be clean and sober, expected to not use drugs?

The ‘progressives’ seem to think that our social problems are caused by government not doing enough, and Mrs Flaherty has been frequently mocked for saying that part of the solution is to have more public libraries open, for longer hours, I guess so the gang-bangers and wannabes could sit in there are read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books.

If, of course, they could read at all. Mrs Flaherty has bragged how she saved the Edward T Steel Elementary School from ‘going charter,’ but the school is ranked 1,205th out of 1,607 Pennsylvania elementary schools, 1% of students scored at or above the proficient level for their grade in math, and 8% scored at or above that level in reading.

But, like lifeguards, there is a shortage of librarians, and a shortage of money to pay for more of them and keep libraries open longer. Mayor Jim Kenney, if not as hard-left ‘progressive’ as Mrs Flaherty, would have loved to keep the libraries open longer, and the City Council would have appropriated money for it, if the city had the money!

Note that even the Editorial Board of the Inky stated that Philadelphians were very highly taxed, and that has contributed to slower job growth and economic opportunities.

I will admit it: while I’d like to see the City of Brotherly Love saved from the looming disaster of progressivism, there’s a little part of me which wouldn’t be all that upset if Mrs Flaherty won, because then Philadelphians, Pennsylvanians, and the whole nation would be able to see what an utter failure progressive policies would be. Coupled up with the police-hating defense lawyer who is the city’s District Attorney, and adding to that a police department crippled by inept leadership and a huge shortage of officers, Philly would become the disaster area of the eastern seaboard, and perhaps, just perhaps, teach the well-to-do liberals who have been voting for Democrats for so long that being soft-on-crime and supporting the bad behavior that makes and keeps people poor harms our society and our country.

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Hold them accountable! The good old boys’ network strikes again

I have frequently called out The Philadelphia Inquirer for poor reporting, so it is only fair when I note when they do good journalism.

The quiet handling of rape allegations at two Philly health institutions

How Jefferson and Rothman dealt with an alleged sexual assault involving an orthopedic surgeon and a medical resident.

by Wendy Ruderman | Monday, May 8, 2023

It was almost midnight and Jessica Phillips, a doctor training in orthopedic surgery, was one of the few guests remaining at a pool party that surgeon John Abraham hosted each summer for Thomas Jefferson University medical residents at his nine-bedroom Main Line home.

Phillips sat in an Adirondack-style chair by a stone fire pit with Abraham, a (Thomas) Jefferson (University) professor and division chief at the Rothman Orthopaedic Institute, a private practice whose physicians work at the university’s hospitals.

The band had packed up, and caterers had cleared the wine glasses and plates smeared with cocktail sauce. Abraham handed her a lit Cuban cigar. She later remembered being so drunk she dropped it on her pants.

The medical resident remembered little else afterward. In flashes, while in and out of consciousness, she recalled Abraham on top of her on the ornate rug in his library. She awoke in his bedroom naked and bruised, she later told multiple investigators.

In Abraham’s recollection, Phillips pulled him on top of her on the library floor, court records show, while his judgment was impaired by alcohol. Nonetheless, in a text message sent to his boss after the party, Abraham acknowledged it was “unethical” to have sex with a medical resident.

It’s a very long story, and there’s a lot of he said/she said in it. Both physicians were intoxicated, both married, though Dr Abraham, then 43-years-old, was going through a divorce, and neither was really capable of consent. As her supervisor, Dr Abraham was contractually barred from a sexual relationship with a subordinate. An investigation resulted in no criminal charges. This is being made public because both Dr Abraham and Dr Phillips are suing.

The events of the June 2018 party spurred three separate investigations and three lawsuits – all now rolling back the confidentiality that usually cloaks how major institutions handle sexual misconduct claims. The cases chronicle sex, power and money in the male-dominated world of orthopedic surgery.

Both Phillips and Abraham say they were victims. They blame Jefferson and Rothman for protecting their institutional interests despite federal regulations that are supposed to ensure sexual assault cases are dealt with fairly.

Ahhh, yes, “protecting their institutional interests”. That’s what “institutions” do!

Jefferson used the threat of federal reporting requirements to force Abraham out of its hospitals while evading formal reports that would let other institutions know what happened.

Then Jefferson’s and Rothman’s leadership brokered a deal that avoided a sexual misconduct hearing and ultimately closed an investigation opened under the federal Title IX law prohibiting sex-based discrimination.

Rothman’s all-male board of directors decided not to fire Abraham. Instead, they restricted him from working in Jefferson’s hospitals or interacting with Jefferson residents. Eventually, they moved him to a hospital network not affiliated with Jefferson in New Jersey.

I remember when then-District Attorney Seth Williams went hard after Monsignor William Lynn, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s supervisor of priest assignments, who was convicted on one of two counts of child endangerment for “knowingly placing minors in danger when he reassigned troubled priests to parishes where they would have access to children.” Msgr Lynn wound up serving almost three years of his three-to-six year sentence, when his conviction was overturned, twice actually, for Mr Williams and Judge Teresa Sarmina misapplying the law.

So, with all of this, why isn’t current Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner going after Thomas Jefferson University and the Rothman Orthopaedic Institute for doing what is a very similar thing? According to the Inquirer, Rothman basically moved Dr Abraham to someplace where his conduct wasn’t widely known, and to a hospital network outside of their control . . . and their liability.

Amid investigations by the university and Rothman, Abraham said, a Jefferson top doctor offered him a deal in a private conversation: Take a voluntary leave, and we won’t report the alleged sexual misconduct.

Congress generally expects health institutions employing doctors accused of wrongdoing to file a report into the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), a federal tracking system.

Hospitals must query the data bank before credentialing a newly hired doctor to ensure that the person hasn’t gotten into trouble elsewhere. Data bank reports also go to state licensing boards.

In court depositions, Abraham recalled getting a phone call from Edmund Pribitkin, chief physician and executive vice president of Jefferson Health, telling him that he had to take an immediate leave of absence from Jefferson.

If he didn’t do as told, Pribitkin said, the sexual assault allegations would go before the hospital’s medical executive committee and they’d likely have to report him to the NPDB, according to Abraham.

So, Rothman essentially blackmailed Dr Abraham into taking an immediate leave, by saying that the Institute would commit a crime by not reporting the sexual assault allegations. Perhaps it’s not just the District Attorney who needs to look into this, but the United States Attorney as well, given that this is an allegation of violation of federal law.

There’s a lot more information at the Inky’s original, and it’s not limited to subscribers, though if you access more than a few articles a month, the paywall does come down.

As a Mass-every-Sunday Catholic, I was very disappointed with the allegations against Msgr Lynn. At most, I saw what he was alleged to have done as a crime by Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, but when this became a criminal case, the Cardinal, by then retired, 88-years-old, and suffering from cancer and dementia, couldn’t be tried. Early in the trial, Judge Sarmina ruled that Cardinal Bevilacqua was able and competent to give testimony as a witness in the case, but just two days after her ruling, the Cardinal died in his sleep. But while Mr Williams and Judge Sarmina misapplied the law as it stood, which resulted in an unfair, and eventually reversed, conviction, the point that the Archdiocese of Philadelphia shuffled around offending priests to keep them from being defrocked or, worse, charged, tried, and convicted in sexual abuse cases was a valid one. Supervisory officials such as then Pennsylvania State University President Graham Spanier, Athletic Director Tim Curley, and Senior Vice President for Finance and Business Gary Schultz, who was responsible for oversight of the campus police department, were all held accountable for covering up former Assistant Football Coach Jerry Sandusky’s rape of a young boy, though they were incarcerated for just a couple of months each.

The Inquirer’s story is the first step, and now law enforcement needs to look into this case. Yeah, there are some wealthy and powerful interests involved here, people able to pay for major league legal help, but the potential prosecution has plenty of money as well. Hold them accountable, and maybe some other good old boys network will think twice before covering up things.

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It was never about tolerance; it was always about forced acceptance

We first mentioned Dylan Mulvaney a month ago, when, as Robert Stacy McCain put it, “satire is rapidly becoming impossible because reality has gotten so weird.” Since then, two well-paid executives accepting his ‘reality’ have managed to get themselves fired “leaves of absence“.

Mr Mulvaney managed to keep his mouth shut for a while, as someone told him he realized that opening it would not help his cause.

Well, he’s talking again, but it isn’t helping his case. According to Mr Mulvaney, I should be in jail!

What did he say?

The articles written about me using ‘he’ pronouns and calling me a man over and over again, and I feel like that should be illegal, I, I don’t know, that’s just bad journalism.

He may rest assured, while I always referred to him as male and use the masculine pronouns, I have never called him a man. Nevertheless, Mr Mulvaney believes that “should be illegal.” I’m not certain under what existing laws he believes that it “should be illegal,” or whether he believes that a new law should be passed to make it so, but I’m pretty solidly in favor of this one:

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

You’ve heard of the First Amendment, right? That pesky part of the Constitution of the United States which states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What Mr Mulvaney doesn’t seem to understand is that the First Amendment protects his right to claim that he’s actually a girl, or to say that he believes it should be illegal for [insert plural slang term for the anus here] like me to refer to him in ways which do not accept his claim that he’s really a woman. I absolutely support his right to say what he wishes, but I also have the right to say that I believe anyone who accepts what he has said as somehow truthful is dumb as a box of rocks.

Naturally, the vast majority of the professional media have been using Mr Mulvaney’s preferred terms, and, as we have previously reported, The Philadelphia Inquirer decided to double down with a fluff piece on Will Thomas, the male former University of Pennsylvania swimmer who decided that he was really a woman, and was calling himself “Lia.” The credentialed media have been quite diligent in their attempts to ‘normalize’ the cockamamie idea that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

That wasn’t all Mr Mulvaney had to say. This is from the HuffPost, so naturally it’s all favorable to him!

Dylan Mulvaney Breaks Silence In Wake Of Bud Light Partnership Backlash

Story by Ben Blanchet • Friday, April 28, 2023

Dylan Mulvaney said she (sic) has struggled to understand “the need to dehumanize and be cruel” following right-wing outrage over her partnership with Bud Light earlier this month. . . . .

Mulvaney, in her (sic) first TikTok in roughly three weeks, said some of what’s “been said” about her (sic) has been far from the truth and revealed that she’s been “having crazy deja vu” after facing criticism.

“I’m an adult, I’m 26 and throughout childhood I was called too feminine and over-the-top and here I am now being called all those same things but this time it’s from other adults,” said Mulvaney, who later quipped that she (sic) should be accused of being a theater person who is camp.

Well, that last is true enough: he is a “theater person who is ‘camp’.” His schtick is over-the-top campiness, and a total parody of how real girls act, yet he doesn’t seem to see how the whole thing makes him wholly unbelievable, and actually hurts people who are ‘transgender’ and are simply trying to fit in to society as they see themselves. Making a spectacle of yourself hardly seems to be trying to fit in.

If that’s all it was, no one would really care. But the left are pushing laws which require other people to go along with a ‘transgendered’ person’s faux name and requested pronouns and honorifics, some of which have passed, subjecting employers to hostile workplace violations if an employee refuses to lie about another employee’s sex, and can even fine businesses if an employee ‘misgenders’ or ‘deadnames’ a customer.

Translation: at least in New York City, the truth will set you free . . . from your job.

As Erick Erickson put it, “You will be made to care.”

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Bud Light: the choice is between incompetence and stupidity Alissa Heinerscheid's Career Limiting Move has limited someone else's career as well

We have previously noted how Anheuser-Busch executives have realized that the corporation completely f(ouled) up over using ‘transgender’ parody actor Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesthing for Bud Light, and how Bud Light’s Vice President for Marketing Alissa Heinerscheid has taken a “leave of absence” over the controversy.

Well, Mrs Heinerscheid hasn’t been the only casualty. From The Wall Street Journal:

Bud Light Brewer Puts Two Executives on Leave After Uproar Over Transgender Influencer

Alissa Heinerscheid, who oversaw Bud Light marketing, and her boss Daniel Blake placed on leave

By Ginger Adams Otis, Lauren Weber, and Jennifer Maloney | Updated: Sunday, April 23, 2023 | 4:26 PM EDT

Anheuser-Busch InBev SA BUD: (%) said it had placed on leave two executives who oversaw a Bud Light collaboration with a transgender activist. Continue reading →

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Harvard grad enters the unemployment line

We have previously noted the idiocy of Bud Light’s Vice President for Marketing Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid’s choice to use Dylan Mulvaney, the homosexual male who claims he’s a girl, and has been using a “365 Days of Girlhood” presentation — which I refuse to link — which completely mocks stereotypes of how real girls act, as the brand’s spokesthing. Well, now the digested food appears to have hit the air circulation device:

Bud Light’s Marketing Leadership Undergoes Shakeup After Dylan Mulvaney Controversy

Alissa Heinerscheid, who has led the brand since June, takes leave of absence and is replaced by Budweiser global marketing VP Todd Allen

by Jon Springer | Friday, April 21, 2023

Anheuser-Busch InBev has changed marketing leadership for Bud Light in the wake of controversy over the brand sending a can to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney with her (sic) face on it.

Alissa Heinerscheid, marketing VP for the brand since June 2022, has taken a leave of absence, the brewer confirmed, and will be replaced by Todd Allen, who was most recently global marketing VP for Budweiser.

I did suggest, in the previous article, that Mrs Heinerscheid had made a “Career Limiting Mistake.” 🙂 Continue reading →

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People are investing in nice housing in parts of Philly, but if the city doesn’t address rampant crime, such will eventually cease.

Sometimes the real news is found in sections of the newspaper — and yes, I’m a newspaper reader, even if it’s just the digital editions! — in which you don’t expect it. From the Real Estate section of The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Apartment building proposed under the El adds even more transit-accessible housing in Fishtown

The 114-apartment building with a restaurant is planned for Front Street.

by Jale Blumgart | Thursday, April 20, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

A 114-unit apartment project is planned immediately adjacent to the Market-Frankford Line at 1440 N. Front St. on the border between Fishtown and South Kensington.

This is the latest, and largest, project from Archive Development, a new real estate company that’s been building in the Fishtown area since 2020. The project will contain 2,000 square feet of retail space, which the company wants to go to a restaurant.

“Front is one of the only streets in Fishtown where you can truly build with high density,” said Henry Siebert, cofounder of Archive. “We’ve seen it transition from a former industrial street with warehouses to a true, viable commercial corridor. That’s what attracted us.”

Amenities include a seventh floor “sky lounge,” with a kitchenette and a roof deck. It will also include a gym, coworking spaces, a dedicated conference room, and a ground floor garden. There will be five studios, 93 one-bedroom units, and 16 two-bedroom units.

There’s more at the original, but that apartment building better have some outrageous soundproofing. Who would want the sound of the El outside their windows?

Fishtown has been gentrifying for years, enough to have attracted the attention of Forbes:

How Fishtown, Philadelphia Became America’s Hottest New Neighborhood

Peter Lane Taylor[1]I cover luxury real estate, travel, hospitality, and entrepreneurs | May 2, 2018,09:52pm EDT

Every Friday afternoon at 5:30 pm the doors of “the El­”—one of America’s oldest elevated subways—swoosh open at Girard and Berks Street stations, unleashing a stampede of Millennials, yuppies, hipsters, entrepreneurs, and empty nesters onto Front Street.

As fast as the doors close, they scatter east down a maze of narrow streets swirling with trash, bumping shoulders with the occasional heroin addict and scrappers pushing shopping carts piled high with salvaged sheet metal. Nobody blinks.

A half dozen blocks away from their newly-built, half-million dollar townhomes, the lines twist out the doors at Pizzeria Beddia and Frankford Hall, two of Philadelphia’s hottest foodie spots. Across the street, Johnny Brenda’s is already packed—hosting as they have for over a decade one of America’s hottest indie rock bands. Mothers pushing strollers window shop past Lululemon along Frankford Avenue’s buzzing retail corridor fronted with wine bars, coffee shops, couture boutiques, yoga studios, a vintage motorcycle joint, and an Argentinian tango dance school.

Visually the dichotomies are jarring. Culturally the contradictions are even more confusing. Yet when the El disgorges its “New Fish” every afternoon it epitomizes the driving forces behind Fishtown’s warp-speed transformation, and the demographics fueling America’s new urban revolution.

There’s more at the original, including this photo, which I found interesting. Captioned as “An average night at Frankford Hall,” it shows the stereotypical young urban professionals at the Frankford Hall Hofbräu München German biergarten, a full courtyard of exclusively white — from what I could see — twenty-and-thirty-somethings. Philly is, overall, a very racially and ethnically diverse — and I’ve come to hate the word ‘diverse’ — cities, but, as the Inquirer previously reported, “Among the 30 biggest cities, Philadelphia is second only to Chicago in its level of residential segregation between Black and white residents, according to data from Brown University. Between Hispanic and white residents, it’s the sixth-most segregated.” And it’s only going to get worse.

But if Fishtown is gentrifying, an up-and-coming neighborhood, it’s right up against Kensington, Philly’s worst, or at least the one with the worst reputation, one so bad that the Mexican government used video of Kensington in an anti-drug ad campaign. And the 1440 North Front Street project is just 2.1 miles from the SEPTA elevated train station at Kensington and Allegheny Avenues.

Inquirer reporter Jake Blumgart spent a fair amount of space telling readers about the mass transit opportunities in the area, with this paragraph standing out:

Archive Development’s project on Front Street comes amid a construction boom directly adjacent to the Market Frankford elevated tracks. The El has struggled with low ridership, remote work trends, and a surge in antisocial behavior following the pandemic.

LOL! A “surge in antisocial behavior”? That’s a rather mild euphemism for shootings, assaults, and rampant drug use in SEPTA stations, with stations and transit cars filled with discarded needles.

There’s a choice that Philadelphia has to take, one which will determine the path our nation’s sixth largest city will follow. Will the city opt for actual law enforcement, and clean up Kensington and the Philadelphia Badlands, to enable further gentrification, wealth, and potential integration, or will it persist in non-enforcement, in excusing crime and leniently treating criminals, further depressing the depressed neighborhoods?

References

References
↑1 I cover luxury real estate, travel, hospitality, and entrepreneurs
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The Amazoning of our lives

Having spent my professional career in the ready-mixed concrete industry, working Sundays was extremely rare, but it wasn’t completely unheard of. There was one year in which a company doing some serious work at the Ford assembly plant in Norfolk, while the plant was closed from Christmas through New Year’s Day, wanted concrete every day during that period, including Christmas and New Year’s Day. Being the man who always got the strange work assignments, I was the first plant manager asked to do the work. And yes, despite being salaried, I was paid extra for the Christmas and New Year’s Day shifts.

‘Wolf in sheep’s clothing’? How a USPS worker’s fight over Sunday shifts could change your workplace.

Story by John Fritze, USA TODAY • Saturday, April 15, 2023 • 10:56 PM

Washington — Gerald Groff wanted to spend his Sundays at church. His employer, the U.S. Postal Service, wanted him delivering packages.

That simple dispute between an employee and his managers sparked one of the most significant religious cases to reach the Supreme Court in years – with the potential to shift the balance of power between employees and employers over weekend schedules, dress codes and how workers conduct themselves around colleagues.

Mr Groff, the article states further down, sought work with the USPS precisely because, as Vernon Dursley happily said in Harry Potter: The Sorcerer’s Stone, there’s “No post on Sundays.”

This one is a bit personal for us, because our younger daughter worked for the USPS in Versailles, Kentucky, as a temporary worker; she hadn’t gotten the actual civil service job yet. And yes, as she told me while I am writing this post, Sundays were required because the regular USPS workers refused to do them, but the Amazon contract required Sunday deliveries.

Now, why would USPS workers be working on Sundays? Because the Postal Service signed a contract to deliver packages for Amazon in 2013, and Amazon wanted packages delivered on Sundays. While USPS tried to give workers off at least one day a week, our daughter had to work 23 days straight for the Christmas rush in December if 2017.

The appeal raises a basic question with potentially sweeping consequences: How far must large employers go to accommodate the religious needs of their workers? For Groff, an Evangelical Christian who told his boss in 2017 that he wouldn’t cover Sunday shifts because of his faith, the answer became a personal and painful one.

“I lived under a cloud of thinking any day I could report to work…and then be told that I was terminated,” said Groff, a 45-year-old Pennsylvanian who resigned from the Postal Service in 2019. “Two years of just pretty much every day was tough.”

While his supervisors attempted to accommodate Mr Groff’s needs, they couldn’t always do so, and he wound up having missed 24 scheduled Sundays, and disciplinary actions against him started to mount.

For nearly five decades, similar disputes have been guided by a 1977 Supreme Court decision that allows employers to deny religious requests if they present more than a trivial cost. That standard, Groff’s attorneys say, means companies could decline to alter schedules to account for a sabbath or allow an employee’s religious dress in too many circumstances.

In practice, the government argues, the standard is often read by courts to require employers to accommodate such requests.

So, the feds are arguing that the standard does not need to be changed, because it is often read improperly, as requiring employers to do things which would have met Mr Groff’s religious needs. That’s one strange argument!

Groff is asking the Supreme Court to toss that standard. But his critics fear what the court’s conservative majority might come up with as a replacement. And they’re concerned that new standard could lead to workplace discrimination.

“There’s a huge can of worms that this opens up,” said Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Letting people shift the cost of exercising their religion onto their co-workers in a way that harms their co-workers is the opposite of equality.”

Whenever you hear something from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, you can count on it: their message will be hostile to the free exercise of religion. Taking Rachel Laser’s statement at face value, one can easily make the argument that other accommodations, such as those for pregnant women, or for handicapped employees which require other employees to work harder or longer, would also be “the opposite of equality.” Would Miss Laser and Americans United state that a company could force a black employee to work on Martin Luther King Day, Juneteenth, or Kwanzaa, because not to do so could burden other employees?

The court will hear arguments in Groff v. DeJoy on Tuesday.

Actually, I expect a narrower ruling, because Mr Groff, who was employed by the United States Postal Service, was being required to work for Amazon as well. More, it will depend on what he was told during his pre-employment interview. Was he told about Sunday deliveries for Amazon, and, if he was, was he told that the USPS would work around his religious faith? Did Mr Groff inform the USPS prior to being hired that he could not work on Sundays?

I’m old enough to remember Sunday “Blue Laws,” or Sunday closing laws, which kept many businesses closed. Things which were deemed essential, such as grocery stores and pharmacies and, of course, hospitals, were exempted. Ira P Robbins argued, in 2022, that Sunday closing laws, while held constitutional by the Supreme Court in McGowan v Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961), they have effectively become obsolete, as exceptions to closing laws increased, some states repealed them, and the public wanted to shop on Sundays. Since McGowan turned on the states wanting to provide a day of rest as a societal good independent of religion, with so much of the public declining to take Sunday as anything other than go, go, go, that argument would fail today.

But perhaps it shouldn’t fail. Does Amazon really need to have things delivered on Sunday, and do people really need to have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer or a bird feeder or a new pair of shoes on Sunday? Did we not find out, during the COVID-19 panicdemic, that certain businesses were not only non-essential on Sundays, but for the rest of the week as well?

I thought that the blue laws were kind of silly when I was a teenager. Now, maybe not so much; we can use a day to slow down.

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Did Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth really not know about the Dylan Mulvaney boondoggle?

When your company does something just boneheadedly stupid, always blame a low-level staffer, even if that low-level staffer holds the title Vice President of Marketing.

My good friend, and occasional blog pinch-hitter, William Teach noted how Anheuser-Busch is trying to backtrack away from the idiocy of using ‘transgender activist’ Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesthing:

Anheuser-Busch CEO Realizes They Really Messed Up, Issues Statement Which Pleased No One

By William Teach | Saturday, April 15, 2023 | 7:00 AM EDT

Brendan Whitworth must have taken a look at the plummeting stock, and, more importantly, the plummeting sales, and decided to do a little damage control:

Anheuser-Busch CEO Issues Statement After Dylan Mulvaney Beer Can Scandal: ‘We Never Intended to Be Part of a Discussion that Divides People’

Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth issued a mea culpa Friday in the wake of the company’s partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, a former gay man who now claims to be a woman.

The move sparked backlash across the nation as the company became the latest to focus on woke social issues — namely, the radical left’s attempts to promote woke gender ideology into society by injecting it into schools and placing it on the forefront of favorite brands in corporate America. According to reports, Anheuser-Busch lost more than $6 billion in market value following its promotional campaign with the transgender TikTok star as tensions rose and boycotts ensued.

On Friday, Whitworth issued a statement, contending that the company “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people.”

Translation: “We were f(ornicating) clueless!”

Anheuser-Busch is headquartered in St Louis, and the Missouri state legislature has been fighting over proposed legislation to prohibit ‘transition’ quackery for minors; did no one there read the St Louis Post-Dispatch? Does no one there pay any attention to the local news broadcasts?

The St Louis Dispatch, rescued from bankruptcy by Joseph Pulitzer in 1878, and merged with John Dillon’s St Louis Post, to become the Post and Dispatch, soon the Post-Dispatch quickly became the city’s most important newspaper, and eventually the largest in the region. It’s a regional newspaper that no one can ignore, and if the paper’s editorial position appears to support ‘gender affirming care,’ the newspaper publishes a fair amount of coverage of the political fight over it. Local television stations also cover the topic.

The leadership of Anheuser-Busch can’t not have known that this is a controversial topic, even if some, or all, of them come down on the side of transgenderism stupidity, even if some, or all, of them swallow the whole idea not just hook, line, and sinker, but all the way up to deep throat the rod-and-reel. But someone in the company decided to make Mr Mulvaney the face of Bud Light advertising.

So far, that decision has been attributed to Alissa Gordon Heinerscheid, who said she had a mandate to keep America’s best-selling beer from losing customers, to expand its customer base.

I’m a businesswoman, I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand there will be no future for Bud Light.

Advertisers have been doing that for decades. We began to see ads including minorities in the 1970s, and many, many ads these days show groups of people who are racially integrated, in an attempt to appeal to all races and ethnicities and show growing friendship. The New York Times was reporting on an increase in interracial couples being shown in advertising five years ago.

But Dylan Mulvaney? He’s not just claiming to be a ‘transgender girl,’ but his shtick is actual mockery of the whole notion; rather than trying to fit in as a woman, his act is one which is a wholly over-the-top of every silly stereotype there is. Mrs Heinerscheid, who is a graduate of Harvard University, was either too clueless or too stupid to see that using Mr Mulvaney as a brand spokesthing would cause a backlash, or she just plain didn’t care, and wanted to use her position to push an agenda, when her job is to sell more beer.

I’ve got to ask: did Chief Executive Officer Whitworth really not know about Mrs Heinerscheid’s brilliant idea? It’s not as though a lot of other people didn’t know: television commercials had to be produced, cans with Mr Mulvaney’s picture were made, checks were cut, contracts signed, all of which involves people, a lot of people, people including attorneys.

We don’t know if Mrs Heinerscheid will be, as Mr Teach suggested, promoted to customer, but something like this would seem to fall well into the category of a Career Limiting Mistake. A corporate Vice President, coming up with an idea as controversial as this one, would normally protect himself by taking it up the ladder, crediting himself with the decision but getting feedback from his bosses.

Yet Mr Whitworth is distancing himself from Mrs Heinerscheid’s decisions. That’s kind of what some people would do when something like this blows up in their faces, leaving Mrs Heinerscheid twisting in the wind.

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Shocking! Who could ever have predicted this? Get woke, go broke?

I have said before that I don’t see Dylan Mulvaney as an actual ‘transgender’ woman; his act, “Days of Girlhood,” is so much a parody, so different from how actual girls act, that it’s difficult to take him seriously. Of course, the dummkopf from Delaware did, as President Biden actually sat down for an interview with Mr Mulvaney. Is there any Catholic doctrine that our purportedly Catholic President won’t trash?

Nike hired Mr Mulvaney to sell sports bras when he has “nothing to put in the sports bra, when actually it’s really important women get proper support when they do sport,” 1980 women’s Olympic silver medalist Sharron Davis said.

Anheuser-Busch somehow thought that it would be an absolutely groovy cool idea to use Mr Mulvaney to sell Bud Light beer!

Bud Light Distributors Fear Unemployment After Beer Sales Plummet Over Dylan Mulvaney Partnership

Story by Haley Gunn • Tuesday, April 11, 2023 • 8:30 PM

Anheuser-Busch distributors have begun to fear for their jobs after Bud Light sales in the Midwest and South plummeted following the beer’s new sponsorship with transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, RadarOnline.com has learned.

News of Mulvaney’s partnership with the popular beer sparked controversy online. Conservative celebrities like Kid Rock took to social media to post their outrage at the brand. Critics accused the brands partnering with the TikTok star of going “woke.”

Frenzy surrounding Bud Light, which is owned by Anheuser-Busch, reached new heights when a man, who claimed to be an affiliate distributor of the beer, posted his grievances on Twitter.

There’s more at the original.

Budweiser beers had already seen slumping sales, so perhaps this was a ‘Hail Mary’ pass attempt. Whatever it was, it seems to have fallen as flat as an open can of beer:

Also read: William Teach: What A Shame: Anheuser-Busch Sees $6 Billion Loss After Trans Stunt

Anheuser-Busch distributors in the South were “spooked” by the widespread backlash Bud Light received after teaming up with transgender social media star Dylan Mulvaney.

The intense opposition to Mulvaney promoting the beer has been alarming to Anheuser-Busch distributors, which placed fewer orders after the partnership sparked outrage from conservatives who argued the company is pushing “gender propaganda,” according to a Beer Business Daily report reviewed by Fox News.

“We reached out to a handful of A-B [Anheuser-Busch] distributors who were spooked, most particularly in the Heartland and the South, and even then in their more rural areas,” the popular beer industry trade publication wrote.

Beer Business Daily said it assessed the situation “purely from a marketing and sales perspective,” noting that current data are very limited but “it appears likely Bud Light took a volume hit in some markets over the holiday weekend” since rural customers are also most likely to celebrate Easter.

“Whether it lasts or whether the publicity sparks incremental off-setting demand from over the ideological divide in metro areas, remains to be seen,” the publication wrote, adding that it will be difficult for Bud Light to “appeal to the sensitivities of a new generation of drinkers” without offending some longtime customers.

It’s too early to know if the slump in sales will continue, but companies use celebrities and athletes to advertise their products because they are hoping for some form of audience identification with the celebrity or athlete. Nike’s sports bra is pretty much the same as any other manufacturer’s sports bra; will using a flat-chested male-in-drag. While Mr Mulvaney has ‘famously’ had ‘facial feminization surgery,’ at least as of a few months ago had not had been castrated or had ‘bottom’ surgery or breast augmentation done. How does that sell sports bras? Does making Mr Mulvaney the ‘face’ of Bud Light really appeal to the vast majority of beer drinkers as someone with whom they’d want to identify?

I cannot boycott Bud Light, or Budweiser beer, or any of Anheuser-Busch’s other products, because I never bought them in the first place, but Bud Light was the nation’s number one beer by sales. Perhaps other beers which taste great but are less filling, whatever the heck that means, will supplant Bud Light, or perhaps they won’t.